Twin suicide blasts kill 41 in Beirut Hezbollah bastion

Twin suicide bombings rocked a busy shopping street Thursday in a Beirut stronghold of Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah, killing 41 people and wounding more than 200 in the worst such attack in years.

Health Minister Wael Abou Faour, speaking from the scene on a street of shops where vendors also sell from stalls, said many of the injured were in serious condition.

The army said the body of a "third terrorist" was found at the scene of one of the blasts after he apparently failed to blow himself up.

The attacks were the deadliest to hit a Hezbollah stronghold since the group entered the conflict in neighbouring Syria in 2013 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

A string of them targeted areas where the group is popular throughout 2013 and 2014. In the most recent one in the southern suburbs of Beirut in June of last year, a suicide car bomb killed a security officer.

Police said two men on foot set off suicide vests Thursday in Burj al-Barajneh, a largely impoverished suburb of the city home to a mostly Shiite Muslim population.

The neighbourhood is bordered by the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp.

An AFP photographer saw extensive damage to buildings around the site of the blast and bodies inside some of the nearby shops.

There was blood on the streets, and security forces were trying to cordon off the scene and keep people from gathering.

Local television stations showed footage of wounded people being carried away by emergency services and civilians.

"I'd just arrived at the shops when the blast went off. I carried four bodies with my own hands, three women and a man, a friend of mine," a man who gave his name as Zein al-Abideen Khaddam told local television.